Capt. Stanley’s unlicsensed, DIY shark dives

The entrepreneur made the discovery while cruising in his submarine, the Idabel, 1,700 feet beneath the waters off Roatan, Honduras. At that depth, amid jagged black boulders and hills of sediment, you can see some amazing creatures: lobsters with spindly arms as long as their bodies, silver-skinned fish the size of a cavalry saber, orange anglerfish with jaws locked in a perpetual grin.

But to see the really big beasts, you need some really big bait. So eight hours earlier, Stanley had bought a tired old horse from a nearby stable, led it onto a boat, shot it in the head, tied cinder blocks to its hooves, and dumped it in the ocean.

The sea this morning was rough, and an unexpected lurch tossed the carcass overboard before Stanley had reached his intended spot. In these murky depths, finding lost objects – even one as large as a horse – can be tough. But there it is, the body stiff but intact, and a foot-long, clawless crustacean called an isopod crawling up its flank.